Another cold morning made waking up at a decent hour prohibitive. I won't say how long we slept in, but the tent was just so much warmer than outside. We packed up camp to head to Fairbanks, stopping to take a picture in front of the Denali National Park sign on our way out. Before leaving, we had a short conversation with a guy from Fairbanks. It turns out that we are exploring Alaska when Alaskans explore Alaska... before the cruise ships start dropping people off. So, since Denali isn't completely open yet, most of the folks camping were from Fairbanks or Anchorage and were just coming down for the weekend. This guy was one of them. He was interested in our rig... the Toyota Matrix with the roof rack. "How much gas mileage?" averaging 30mpg, about the same as usual around town. "How much weight can the rack hold?" 125 pounds. "I have a Tundra and I love Toyotas. My wife wants one of these." Yeah, we love it. We got rid of our Tundra for the better gas mileage, but this definitely doesn't have the passing power that the Tundra did. The road to Fairbanks drops out of the mountains to flat, rolling hills. It was only a two hour drive. We called ahead to a motel recommended in our travel guide (the Rough Guide to Alaska. have we mentioned it?), and headed to University of Alaska Fairbanks to explore the Museum of the North. In addition to a great overview exhibit on Alaska (which we have seen more than a few of by now), the highlights were upstairs in the "art" gallery. The gallery was quite bold in how it choose to select, present, and therefore represent "Art." A single panel written by the director and likely overlooked by most patrons discussed the choice of pieces for the exhibit... Cara took a photo, which can be seen below. It explains their choices for showing Native art (instead of relegating it to a lesser status), and practical quilting next to oil paintings. In all, this allowed the exhibit to truly capture much of the beauty of the surprisingly diverse cultural landscape of Alaska, and highlighted that one need not call oneself an artist in order to create art. Art emerges from a diversity of motivations. We had dinner at a fantastic Thai restaurant (If anyone knows why there are a ton of Thai restaurants in Fairbanks, please let me know), then back to the motel to prepare for our departure from Alaska and our trip back down the Alcan tomorrow.